“Twelve years ago I was the change agent,” says Whitman. Yes, he was, and that fact is largely forgotten. So is the fact that the city’s excessive force settlements have not been on the rise, as some critics seem to think.

Yet is Whitman really suggesting that the coverage of, say, the 2009 beating of Michael DeHerrera in Lower Downtown by police was unwarranted? Or that critics should simply ignore the astonishing insistence of the police union and others that lying by officers on official reports amounts to a trivial offense?

And speaking of the DeHerrera case, let’s not forget, as a Denver Post editorial noted on March 16, “It took almost two years for him to say it publicly, but Denver Police Chief Gerry Whitman finally echoed what many in Colorado have long believed: The officer who beat an unarmed and non-threatening Michael DeHerrera needs to go.”

So it took the chief nearly two years before decisively weighing in! Is it really any wonder that the department has gotten a black eye?

Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper‘s selection of Judge Brian Boatright, the only Republican among the three nominees, as Colorado’s next state Supreme Court justice has major implications given several important 4 to 3 decisions in recent years.

For example, the Lobato lawsuit, in which the education establishment is seeking to have the courts instead of the legislature dictate school funding levels, would have died without a 4 to 3 ruling by the high court that reversed lower court rulings.

While you can’t always predict how a justice will rule on highly charged issues based solely on the person’s ideological background, it usually provides one important clue. And any one who contributed to Bill Owens‘ and John Suthers’ campaigns in 1998, as Boatright did, is very unlikely, even 13 years later, to be as far left as Justice Alex Martinez, who is retiring at the end of this month.

So Denver hedge-fund manager Drew “Bo” K. Brownstein has pleaded guilty to insider trading that netted him nearly $2.5 million and faces a potential prison term of three to four years under a federal plea agreement.

And Brownstein’s buddy, Denver investment manager Drew Peterson, who fed him the tip on a pending acquisition involving Mariner Energy, has pleaded guilty and will be sentenced in January.

But what of the original source of the insider information, the fellow who started the ball rolling and actually encouraged the activity that followed? Why, H. Clayton Peterson, the former managing partner of Arthur Andersen’s Denver office who gave the insider information to his son, was sentenced earlier this month to just two years’ probation and no jail time.

Dan Quayle may have set the modern record for embarrassing gaffes by a vice president, but most were simply goofy mistakes. Quayle would get lost in an off-the-cuff statement, misspell a word, or misplace a century.

Joe Biden, on the other hand, is a different sort of court jester — one with a jagged edge. When the vice president and one-time plagiarist and resume padder isn’t assuring the Chinese government that “I fully understand” its immoral and now disastrous one-child policy, he’s accusing political opponents of indifference to murder and rape.

In his latest series of bizarre pronouncements, the vice president accused critics of the president’s $447 billion jobs bill of being soft on violent crime because some of the money would be used to hire cops and firefighters.

In Biden’s view, moreover, opponents who point out that the federal funds would be temporary need a good scare to straighten them out.

“Well, let me tell you,” he said this week in Philadelphia, “it’s not temporary when that 911 call comes in and a woman’s being raped if a cop shows up in time to prevent the rape. … It’s not temporary to the guy whose store is being held up and a gun is being pointed to his head; if a cop shows up and he’s not killed, that’s not temporary to that store owner.

“Give me a break, ‘temporary’! I wish these guys that thought it’s temporary, I wish they had some notion what it’s like to be on the other side of a gun. Or a 200-pound man standing over you telling you to submit.”

Biden is one heartbeat away from the presidency, and he thinks he can talk like a goon as well as tar deficit hawks as heartless.

Before opening his mouth again, he might also want to check FBI crime statistics. Violent crime has been in retreat in recent years – in fact, the rate has been receding more or less since the early 1990s – and the rate of property crimes has dipped, too, even during the height of the recession. Surely cities such as Philadelphia can handle their own policing needs in such an environment.

Rick Perry was very upset, you quickly sensed in Tuesday’sGOP debate in Las Vegas. “Mitt, you lose all of your standing, from my perspective, because you hired illegals in your home and you knew about it for a year,” the Texas governor said to Mitt Romney. “And the idea that you stand here before us and talk about that you’re strong on immigration is on its face the height of hypocrisy.”

So every household is supposed to be its own border patrol? We’re supposed to snoop into the status of the fellow who mows the lawn?

Since when?

I once hired a contractor to replace my driveway and front walk. When his crew showed up for the job, most of them spoke Spanish. Does Perry believe I was duty bound to inquire about their immigration status? Do normal people actually do that?

On another occasion I hired a contractor to replace my back lawn. His crew seemed to be entirely Vietnamese. Was I supposed to interrogate them as well? What busy body would do that?

So Mitt Romney once used a lawn service that hired illegal immigrants from Guatemala, and which continued to employ illegals after being warned to cease and desist. It doesn’t prove a thing about his attitude toward illegal immigration – except maybe that when he was governor of Massachusetts, he didn’t feel the need to showboat on the issue to the extent that nearly every GOP candidate for president does.

You would expect left-wing radio talk show host David Sirota to favor the union-backed candidates in the Denver School Board race – even if one of them, Emily Sirota, didn’t happen to be his wife. And you’d expect him to rail against the big checks that have flowed into the reform candidates’ coffers as a threat to democracy, which Sirota believes we are “losing.”

But Sirota’s performance on his show today was nonetheless shocking for his refusal to credit wealthy donors with any genuine interest in the welfare of children or in improving urban education. Their involvement, apparently, is totally cynical.

“There’s big money to be made in privatizing public schools,” Sirota said at one point. “When I see an oil company executive write a $75,000 check and dump it into the Denver public school board race I think that person is buying something. That kind of money – $500,000 for a school board race to the candidates backed by the national organizations pushing to privatize, voucherize and charterize our school system – that kind of money doesn’t go in out of the goodness of somebody’s heart.

So John Malone has surpassed Ted Turner as America’s largest landowner, according to today’s Denver Post – and not a moment too soon, what with the revolution brewing.

Say what? No, I don’t think America’s economic woes are going to lead to a parade of tumbrels ferrying billionaires like the chairman of Douglas County-based Liberty Media off to the guillotine. If it didn’t happen during the Great Depression, why on Earth would anyone think it would happen today?

But Malone himself seems to be strangely insecure. At a Sun Valley media conference last year, Malone revealed that he and his wife are a bit, um, paranoid about the implications of an economic meltdown. To wit:

They say success has a thousand fathers, which no doubt explains Arturo Jimenez’s budding enthusiasm for West Denver Prep schools. Less than two years ago, this same northwest Denver school board member, now up for re-election, was complaining that these charters might be too good at producing minority engineers (you read that correctly). Today he’s taking bows for their expansion.

“I’m very proud also to be the person who helped usher West Denver Prep into north Denver,” Jimenez said at a recent forum. In fact, he voted on several occasions against plans to open the schools there. And in explaining one such vote to Spanish-speaking parents, Jimenez warned, “We want our children, too, to be leaders and not just engineers who upon graduating from college build bomb components meant to destroy while others make the key decisions for us out in the world.”

Who but Gallagher would flaunt his knowledge of Latin – claiming Sirota’s motto should be “Fiat justicia et caeli ruant,” or “Let justice be done though the heavens fall” – and then confusingly claim that the heavens are already falling in the district? Ah, well, our Regis scholar is always looking for ways to slip in evidence of his erudition and it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Gallagher seems to think that chanting, “The graduation rate in Denver is scandalous” and “the drop-out rate is scandalous,” amounts to a brave act of dissidence. Yet no one who supports the DPS reform efforts of the past few years would dispute those statements. Those are among the reasons the Denver Plan was devised.

I searched in vain in Gallagher’s endorsement for specific district policies he believes are counterproductive, just as I waited in vain during a recent interview with Sirota for mention of district policies she’d discard.

An Associated Press article in today’s Denver Post reveals why the national anti-obesity crusade is unlikely to succeed with many Americans short of the government adopting extraordinary measures that most of us – I’m hoping – would resist.

“No matter that first lady Michelle Obama​ has been on a crusade for a year and a half to slim down the country,” according to the report. “Never mind that some restaurants have started listing calories on their menus. Forget even that we keep saying we want to eat healthfully. When Americans eat out, we order burgers and fries anyway…

“That explains the popularity of KFC’s Double Down, a sandwich of bacon and cheese slapped between two slabs of fried chicken. It’s the reason IHOP offers a Simple & Fit menu with yogurt and fruit bowls, but its top seller remains a 1,180-calorie breakfast sampler of eggs, bacon, sausage, ham, hash browns and pancakes. It’s also why only 11 percent of parents order apple slices as an alternative to fries in McDonald’s Happy Meals.”

So let’s say that through continual harping about the dangers of obesity we convince a third of parents to order the apple slices. What then? If unhealthy food – which is usually unhealthy only when eaten frequently – is still the preferred choice of a majority of diners, even though they have been educated to know better, what should society do?

Vincent Carroll is The Denver Post's editorial page editor. He has been writing commentary on politics and public policy in Colorado since 1982 and was originally with the Rocky Mountain News, where he was also editor of the editorial pages until that newspaper gave up the ghost in 2009.

Guidelines: The Post welcomes letters up to 150 words on topics of general interest. Letters must include full name, home address, day and evening phone numbers, and may be edited for length, grammar and accuracy.

To reach the Denver Post editorial page by phone: 303-954-1331

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